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Article |
February 29, 1996

Norwegian dairy improves shelf life of gabletop for creamer

Unlike their counterparts in the U.S., many European consumers are no strangers to shelf-stable coffee creamers in aseptic bricks, even though that style of package lacks some of the user-friendliness and pouring ease of the gabletop carton.

Now Ostlandsmeieriet Hedmark Torrmelk a Norwegian dairy in the city of Brumunddal is producing what it calls "a truly aseptic" gabletop container for coffee creamer. The 1/4-L carton which has a 90-day shelf life is produced on a Pure-Pak U-S80 A Aseptic(TM) filling machine from Elopak (New Hudson MI). This marks the first commercial installation of the Elopak machine.

Commissioned in late '94 this modelreplaced an earlier Elopak gabletop system that Elopak describes as more of an "extended shelf life" system than a "true" aseptic system. The difference? The new machine provides a 90-day shelf life up from 60 days. Impressively the machine also triples production to 8/hr and eliminates considerable downtime experienced with the previous system. Material cost savings are enjoyed too. The previous system required presterilized carton blanks. In the new system the seven-layer foil laminate cartons are sterilized with a spray of 2% hydrogen peroxide solution then exposed to ultra-violet light for drying. Thus Hedmark saves $75 annually by sterilizing on the machine.

Hedmark is scheduled to produce nearly 10 million TINE-brand coffee creamer cartons this year. PW toured the progressive Norwegian dairy as part of a February 7-8 media event hosted by Elopak.

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